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Leftists Denounce the NYC They Created

RUSH: I've got a picture here of Mayor Doomberg and Amanda Burden (who used to date Charlie Rose), who was the daughter of "Babe" Paley.

She is some head honcho in New York City, city planning, commissioner planning, whatever, some bureaucracy. They're walking on a floor plan of 200- and 300-square-foot apartments that New York residents are going to live in. Affordable housing in New York has become a 200- to 300-square-foot trash receptacle to be piled on top of each other in high-rise apartments. It is a jail cell. But here's the thing.

They're doing it to make it affordable, and they're doing it 'cause Doomberg says (summarized), "Nobody needs any more space than that. Nobody's home anyway. All you do at home is sleep there, and we need affordable housing." I couldn't help but think, "This is what liberalism has gotten us. This is exactly where they've taken us." Their own policies have created this. You know, they talk about the "income inequality" and the "unfairness" and the disparity of the haves and the have-nots in New York City.

Who has been running that city for all this time? Who has created the underclass in this country? It's the Democrat Party. The American left has created the underclass. The Democrat Party needs an underclass. They need a permanent underclass to vote for them. The Democrat Party needs then. That's why they're so interested in illegal immigration, because as people... It doesn't happen so much anymore now with the Obama economy, but people used to move out of the middle class.

There was upward mobility in America, and, as people moved out of the middle class, the Democrat Party needed new people to move into it. That's not so much a problem anymore because there isn't all that upward mobility out of the middle class, particularly in towns run by liberals. So left to their own devices, look at the absolute horror show that liberals make and create for humans to live in.

Take your favorite city that has been run by Democrats and liberals for all these years and it speaks for itself, and now the solution to affordable housing and not enough room is a 300-square-foot apartment, a bunch of 'em in one building, meant for families with kids, with foldable furniture -- and they're patting themselves on the back for coming up with this idea. The economic circumstances for the majority of Americans plummet when liberals get their way.

Then they end up creating these massive problems, and then they come to town with their own solutions to problems they have made and created, and it's just utter disaster. (interruption) You're right, Snerdley. These are no bigger than jail cells. Doomberg's got three or four mansions, not just the one in Bermuda. Anyway, de Blasio's gonna fix that. He said (paraphrase), "We're not gonna wait! We're just gonna do it now. We're gonna get rid of this income inequality and we're gonna make sure that there's fairness."

This is gonna be hilarious to watch from afar. It's not gonna be fun for people that live there, but it's gonna hilarious to watch from afar.

I have never been happier to have been out of the place for a host of reasons.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to de Blasio in New York. We've got some sound bites of the inauguration. John Fund of National Review was there and wrote a little bit about it. The keynote was provided by well-known communist and communist sympathizer Harry Belafonte, and I don't say that laughingly or joking. He is a pro-communist. He's 86 and has a history of extremism. He's been a houseguest-of-Fidel Castro.

You might remember that Harry Belafonte called Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice "house slaves" of the Bush administration. Last year, he compared the Koch brothers to the Ku Klux Klan. So that's the guy doing the keynote at the inauguration of the new mayor, Bill de Blasio. He said, "We will be no longer a divided city." He compared today's New York to a "Dickensian nightmare," as in Charles Dickens, as Mayor Doomberg sat there looking on stone faced, because these people ripped in.

All the de Blasio people, all the speakers just ripped into New York as it is, and Bloomberg is sitting there on the dais as the outgoing mayor and he's stone faced because he's being insulted left and right. At some point Bill Clinton got up to speak. He swore de Blasio in and then Clinton got up to speak and was the first guy to say something decent about Bloomberg, and the crowd booed. This crowd, the crowd that showed up to see the inauguration of de Blasio, folks, these are not just leftist Democrats.

This is the extreme, far left of this country. One of the first things de Blasio said he's gonna do is eliminate the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. Just gonna get rid of 'em. And not just in Central Park, but everywhere. He's just gonna wipe out the hroses. Why do you think that is? Why do you think the new mayor of New York is going to get rid of the horse-drawn carriage? Now, keep in mind, keep in mind that these people believe that automobiles are responsible for destroying the planet.

Keep in mind these people think that automobiles and fossil-fueled vehicles are destroying the climate and would love to take us back to the horse and buggy days, except the new mayor of New York thinks it is cruel and inhumane for horses to pull carriages with people in them. If horses are pulling, you know, carts of manure, I guess that's okay. But if they're doing it for the pleasure of human beings, then it is abuse of the horse -- and we're not gonna have it.

We're not gonna be an inhumane city anymore. We're not gonna treat our animals like animals. We're not gonna be inhumane. We're not gonna have horses pulling carriages around with a bunch of fat people in 'em, for the pleasure of these people and putting these horses out. That's inhumane and we're not gonna do it. Does this guy have no understanding of the history of horses? Does he have no idea they were created as beasts of burden among many other purposes? Next thing you know he's gonna say it's inhumane to ride a horse.

"Would you like to be ridden?"

There's a bunch of leftists would say, "Yeah, every night. I'd love it!"

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I wonder. I'm sure de Blasio knows the Teamsters run the carriage rides in Central Park. He's just wiping out a Teamster concession. But that's not the point. The point is he's doing it because it's cruel and inhumane to the horses to pull carriages, and we aren't gonna be for that in New York. We are not gonna be seen in Central Park. In one respect, Central Park was designed with horse-drawn carriages in mind. I thought the left wanted us to go back to horses and the horse and buggy, to get rid of fossil fueled vehicles.

This is the kind of time-wasting minutia that occupies these people's minds and this is the kind of move that de Blasio is convinced people will see that he's a caring, feeling, and touching, and sensitive, compassionate individual, and all it does is telegraph his utter ignorance of history. Anyway, I'm sure this is something is gonna pop up as time passes, and there's gonna be more of it. This is just the beginning, folks, of the ongoing adventures of what's gonna be happening here to New York City.

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RUSH: Here is Bill Clinton yesterday the New York City at City Hall as Democrat Bill de Blasio was formally sworn in as mayor. Before the swearing-in, Clinton spoke, and he felt the need to praise Doomberg.

CLINTON: This inequality problem bedevils the entire country, but it is not just a moral outrage; it is a horrible constraint on economic growth and on giving people the security we need to tackle problems like climate change.

RUSH: Meanwhile, global warming scientists are stuck in the middle of Antarctic ice they didn't even know was there. Inequality in New York? The Clintons are in the super rich now. He's part of the problem. The Democrat Party creates this inequality. Again, folks, the Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass. That's their base. That's who elects them. They need people who are in poverty.

They need the poor to stay poor so that they need government benefits provided by, they think, Democrats. The Democrat Party and their policies, ever since FDR's New Deal and moving forward to LBJ and the Great Society, have created this inequality. This gap of income inequality, this gap of haves and have nots, it's not the rich that are creating this. If you want to find out why this gap exists, you have to look at what is it that's keeping the poor poor.

Now, what the Democrats want you to do is focus on the rich and hate them. Democrats want you to focus on the rich and the successful and resent them and hate them and to think that they're stealing from you and to think that the rich have what used to be your money. They've somehow found a way to take it from you, even though you never had it, and they're not giving it back to you.

It's "proof that trickle-down doesn't work," and so the Democrats are gonna come and play Robin Hood. They're gonna take it from these rich people who took it from you and they're gonna give it back to you. They've been doing this for I don't know how long. The Democrats have been redistributing wealth ever since FDR, and the underclass has stayed the underclass, hasn't it?

Since LBJ's Great Society starting in 1964, there has been over $8 trillion of income redistributed. That's just since 1964, and $8 trillion might be low. Over $8 trillion has been taken via taxation from the wealthy, from the achievers, from successful people, and transferred to the poor -- and the poor are still poor. And according to Democrats, they're poorer than ever, and the gap is wider than ever. Well, to find the answer to this, or the explanation, you have to ask: "Who's keeping the poor poor?" or, "Who is preventing the poor from escaping poverty?"

And then you ask: "Who is it subsidizing poverty?"

Your answer is always going to take you back to the Democrat Party, who, while they're responsible for it, continue to mount their soapbox and blame others.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I owe you a couple of sound bites. I promised them from the de Blasio swearing in. We played Clinton. Here's Harry Belafonte, just to give you a flavor for this stuff. This is Belafonte at the swearing in of the new mayor of New York yesterday.

BELAFONTE: "Changing the stop-and-frisk law is -- as important as it is, the change of a law is only the tip of the iceberg in fixing our deeply Dickensian justice system.

RUSH: "Dickensian justice system." So these people are standing up and they are reciting a litany of things wrong in New York City, and, aside from Mayor Giuliani, this place has been run by leftists forever. Every problem that exists in New York derives from liberalism. Every one. Now, I want to repeat something here. What these people are all talking about -- well, Belafonte is talking about the prison system, and the racist way that justice is handled in New York and the prison population.

But the rallying cry for de Blasio was this "income inequality," class warfare, class envy -- which, of course, is easy because the numbers of middle class and poor people vastly outnumber the rich. Plus, the rich are not interested in defending themselves. Nothing in it for them. So there's never any sympathy for the rich. Not that there should be, but there isn't. So playing the class warfare card is easy for the Democrats.

In terms of the shotgun approach, you're simply gonna probably attract more acolytes by going after the rich. They can't outnumber you. But the middle class and the poor combined can. This is what the Democrats have always done. But the question of income inequality is a real one, and the question of prosperity and how to achieve it. Those are real questions, and there are real economic answers. There is a way to increase prosperity. It's called capitalism.

There is a way to increase what people earn. It's called capitalism. It's called productivity. The answer to this is not the government. It isn't redistribution. Because the government doesn't create anything. The government can only destroy wealth. It cannot create it. Well, a caveat to that. They can print money and give it to the stock market like they've been doing. But on the whole they can't create wealth, and they don't. They don't produce anything.

Government simply destroys wealth, and this is what the Democrat Party in many ways has become. They've got voters who want them to destroy wealth, and the belief is that they go take the money from the rich and the Democrats somehow are gonna give the money to the poor and the middle class. There have been people voting Democrat for 50 years expecting to get rich in the process, and they haven't.

They've either stayed economically the same or they've gotten poorer. Again, if you want to find out why income inequality exists or why there is a wide gap between rich and poor, you have to... If you're gonna intellectually, honestly approach this, you have to ask, "Who is it that's keeping the poor poor?" Because somebody is. Who benefits from the poor? Who benefits from the fact that there are poor people?

That answer is the Democrat Party.

It's in their vested interests to keep people poor and then promise them every four years they're going to fix it. It's in their interests to keep people poor and tell those people they're poor because of evil rich people and Republicans, and that only Democrats can fix it. But the Democrats, in truth, are not interested in upward mobility. Whenever there are two groups... Let's look at education. Let's look at one of the Democrats' creations, outcome based education.

In a school -- this actually happened -- you have high achievers, people who get good grades, very smart, and then you've got people not doing so well, kids. The Democrats look at that and they say, "It's not fair. These kids are getting A's and learning a lot and much faster than others. It's not fair." So what do the Democrats do? Try to slow them down. The Democrats punish the achievers. They do not ever attempt to elevate the people at the bottom.

The way the Democrats go about seeking equality is to lower people at the top. The Democrats dream is if they're... What they want people to believe the dream is, is that there would never be any rich. The Democrats are gonna see to it. A lot of people vote Democrat thinking that the Democrats are gonna wipe out the rich. They're finally gonna wipe 'em out, gonna take their money, and they're gonna give it to the poor and they're gonna give it to the middle class.

They're gonna give everybody a house and a home or whatever they want, and we're gonna have equality -- and nobody's gonna have to work for it. All you have to do is vote Democrat time and time again and that'll happen. That's what the Democrats promise. That's basically one of the fundamental aspects of their campaign year after year after year -- and in the process, they have kept people poor. They have destroyed their work ethic. They have destroyed people's ambitions. They've taken away their drive.

It's really... You talk about inhumane treatment of horses and so forth? What the Democrat Party has done to the majority of people who vote for them, to me, is near criminal, in the political sense -- the lives they've destroyed, the ambition they've destroyed, the dignity they've taken away, the families they've busted up -- all in the pursuit of their own power. While they do this, they blame a bunch of hapless Republicans. They blame the rich.

Of course nobody, very few people... Let's put it this way: Most people would love to be able to blame everybody else or somebody else for their problems, and the Democrats even provide that. "You're not doing well? Fine! You're getting screwed. The rich took your money. You're not doing well? Fine! The Republicans don't care about you. They like that you're poor. They want your money to go to the rich and the oil companies and the pharmaceutical companies, and so forth."

But it's the Democrat Party that's responsible for the widening gap between rich and poor, and the Democrats' policies that are responsible for income inequality. The Democrat Party has done its best to impugn capitalism and the very route to prosperity. They've turned people away from it. They've convinced people it's unfair, it's unjust, and it's immoral, and it's led to a disaster -- and wherever Democrats have ruled the roost for years, you see the evidence.

Let me find this. I talked about this in the first hour, and here it is. This story is from the New York Daily News back on December 22nd. "Micro-Apartments Planned in NYC Can Lead to Major Psychological Problems: Report -- As New York City plans to build a residential tower of tiny apartments between 250 and 370 square feet at 225 E. 27th St. in Manhattan, an expert warns that placing people in their 30s and 40s in such dwellings can increase rates of domestic violence and substance abuse."

This is also in The Atlantic, a well-known leftist magazine. "[S]tudies have shown that children raised in tight spaces can end up withdrawn and struggle to study and concentrate, according to Susan Saegert, professor of environmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. City housing officials contend the smaller pads will create more affordable units that can be made cozy with adjustable furniture."

They'll be miserable, but it'll be affordable. Microapartments planned in New York City. A residential tower of apartments between 250- and 370-square feet. What this is, is the equivalent of people living in what amounts to cargo containers stacked on top of each other -- or, as Mr. Snerdley pointed out, jail cells. Now, let's be clear about something. This is a solution. This is a solution that Mayor Doomberg and others in New York think is a brilliant idea.

This is what liberalism has wrought.

Their own policies have created massive gaps in the price of real estate, massive gaps in what people earn, massive gaps in standards of living, ever widening gaps in what people earn. So the Democrats come along. Their own policies create the circumstances where there isn't any, quote/unquote, "affordable housing." Their own policies create this nightmare, and their solution they're patting themselves on the back for, and they consider themselves compassionate, is 250-square-foot cargo containers as homes!

I don't know how these people get elected. Who in the world thinks this is a good idea? Obama's brother lives in a place like this. A hut. Now, Obama's brother lives in a place that's six by nine, in Kenya. These places are not that much bigger, and this is a solution? These 270-square feet, 370-square feet, these are intended for families. You gotta have a toilet in there. You've gotta have beds and adjustable furniture? This offends me greatly. This offends my sensibility.

The idea that this is praiseworthy, the idea that this is a solution, this is how New York creates affordable housing, and liberals who come up with this idea want to get applauded? By the way, the people coming up with this idea wouldn't set foot in this building, much less one of these apartments. These people coming up with these ideas live in massively large houses. So you also have the specter of a bunch of liberals devising plans for other people to live that they themselves wouldn't even visit.

It's kinda like Obamacare.

None of the people who wrote Obamacare want anything to do with it. None of the people responsible for Obamacare can afford it. They all want subsidies. None of the people that gave us Obamacare have any desire to actually go to HealthCare.gov and sign up. That's for you and me to have to do. But there's a picture here of Mayor Doomberg, and Amanda Burden and some housing authority guy, and they're in a building with these 250-square-foot places marked off on the floor.

They're proudly displaying how one of them will fit on one floor, and they're praising themselves for what a brilliant housing idea. Meanwhile, they're gonna ban horse-drawn carriages 'cause it's inhumane to the horses? But it's perfectly fine to stack people in 250-square-foot cargo containers? We're not talking about the homeless, folks. We're talking people who are going to pay for these.

They're gonna go out and get mortgages, maybe subprime, for a 250-square-foot cargo container in an apartment building, in New York City -- and they want applause for a great idea! This is their solution. Don't think that you are immune to this just because you don't live in New York. These people want to run the country. This is how, by the way... People that live here have no way they're gonna have a car. They're not gonna be permitted to have a car.

They're gonna have to use transit, mass transit, the hoof express, whatever it is.

This is called reducing the standard of living. This is called lowering the standard of living. This is not reducing any income gap. This is making people poorer, and the purpose of this story is to point out how it's gonna make 'em crazy, literally crazy. You put a mom and dad and a kid or two in this space and say the family must do everything it normally does in that space, and this story's pointing out you're gonna have people going nuts, literally going crazy, in this kind of space, as their home.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I remember Mayor Doomberg refused to move into Gracie Mansion, which is the official residence of the mayor of New York. He refused because it wasn't good enough. It wasn't big enough. It wasn't good enough. He said the security wasn't good enough, but it just wasn't good enough overall. Now Mayor Doomberg wants to overturn a law dating back to 1987 in New York that requires that an apartment be at least 400 square feet. Now "progress" Is 250- to 370-square feet.

Here's Karen in Tucson, Arizona, as we hit the phones. Karen, thank you for waiting. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I'm about to jump out of my skin. You know, we used to hear about the McMansions during the Reagan/Bush 1 era, even the Clinton era. But now with the Democrats we're getting Soviet Bloc housing in apartments. It's like watching House Hunters International.

CALLER: Well, you got a communist in office now in New York City, you know?

RUSH: Well, I don't think that that's wrong. I really don't think that's incorrect. I mean, you got at least a pro-communist supporter.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Look, folks, let me, again, point something out. I oftentimes make a mistake of assuming too much. In talking about "income inequality" and the gap between the rich and the poor and the Democrats, that's not what this is really all about when they talk about that. So de Blasio made this big deal that the first thing he's gonna go in there and do is they're gonna fix this income inequality. The first thing.

Well, the horses. He's gonna protect the horses, save the horses. That's the first thing, and then income inequality. But that's not what it's about. It's about control, folks. It's about New Yorkers surrendering even more control over their own lives, surrendering more of their own self-determination. This is about people who wish to control every aspect of the way you live.